Over the past couple weeks, and the last few days in particular, parts of the forums have exploded with activity related to moderation. I think it is important for us to step back and see what we can do to improve our community, instead of simply yelling over each other.
The solution is make the rules and the enforcement of them more consistent, for regular users and ESOC staff alike. In addition, we need one or more new moderators, who will be able to read the forums more often and deal with issues as they arise. But more important than doling out warnings and bans is communicating with the user base. Obviously, it can take a lot of time for moderators to talk one-on-one with users who have broken rules about what went wrong, but I believe that is the best way to deal with these issues and improve the forums for everybody.
I believe that I would be able to help ease tensions by becoming a moderator. And I’m not the only one who thinks so:
Goodspeed wrote:Personally I am still for (very) lenient moderation policies in off-topic, but it's hard to justify when there's this many trolls around. The thing with strict moderation though, as we've seen, is that the trolling only gets worse. As rules get stricter people increasingly try to get away with more. A solution would be to start a dialog with the trolls and weed out the ones who aren't willing to listen, rather than filtering out any discussion that may lead to friction.
But being effective at weeding out trolls is a very time-consuming task because as a mod it's important to keep in touch with users and, as mentioned, keep a civil discussion over PM with every community member that is on thin ice. Locking posts and warning is much easier, but I can imagine it will alienate users. What we need is someone who posts in off topic frequently, is neutral, and is able to stay objective in his/her judgment.
#modtheear
iNcog wrote:I agree with this, very much. A lot. Dialog, dialog, dialog. Though it's going to be very hard to remain objective in judgements, I think that with a little communication things should work out. "hey guys i locked this one, because of this reason. sorry about that, but we really can't have X on the forums for Y reason" or "hey man, i understand your frustration with X user, but doing that stuff is causing more problems for you than for that user. let us mods try to get some sense into X user, but don't try to do it yourself"
Just handing out warnings with a "u broke da rules" just doesn't cut it.
I would seriously consider modding someone of the basement crew. If things go awry, then you can boot them quickly on the grounds that things aren't working out. Then, find someone else. There are plenty of perfectly legitimate candidates for moderation.
Now incog and I have disagreed many times, but I respect him a lot. He was a former admin who stepped down from his position because he didn’t want his posts to reflect negatively on the ESOC Staff as a whole. Some of the other staff members still post in unprofessional ways, however (I will not be singling anyone out because this thread is not meant to be a witchhunt).
Despite what some people say, I really do care about the community, and I want it to continue to grow and prosper. That is why I believe in #modtheear. Please feel free to post any questions or concerns you may have regarding this.